The Powers Of Christian Love
THE POWERS OF CHRISTIAN LOVE.
THE powers of Christian love as delineated by St.
Paul in 1 Corinthians xiii. are classified under four heads—first, passive streneth:
" Love beareth all things ;" second, intellectual charity: "Love believeth all things ;" third, moral optimism : '"' Love hopeth all things ;" and fourth, persistence in time :
'Love endureth all things."
To see the full range of the power of this love, we must consider each of these in turn.
We begin with the passive strength of Christian love: "'Love beareth all things."
The idea suggested by the original is that of an infinite capacity for silent suffering.
Now it is hardly too much to say that the very idea of such a power was a new thought to the world.
The notion of suffering was not new, and the notion of silence was not new; but the union of the two was a somewhat novel combination.
The Jew suffered, but he cried out ; the Stoic did not cry out, but he had ceased to suffer.
It will be found that the whole ancient world had its type in one or other of these.
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either looked with horror on the prospect of pain, or it looked with contempt on the susceptibility to pain.
There is a passage cited in the Epistle to the Hebrews which has always seemed to us to mark off the two opposite effects of sorrow on the old world: "Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked by Him."
To despise suffering, and to faint beneath suffering : these were the separate tendencies of separate minds.
The mind of the Jew, and the popular mind of the Greek, though from different reasons, habitually fainted ; the one from the sense of being a religious outlaw, the other from his abhorrence of aught but physical ease.
The Buddhist, on the other hand, sought to crucify the very fact of sensation, and in this he was joined by the Stoic and the Platonist.
Their aim was to despise sorrow.
Their idea of moral perfection was a heart in which all feeling was dead, to which pleasure could bring no thrill, and pain no sting.
They sought a hfe in which reason alone should rule, a life from which all emotion should be banished, and from whose borders should be excluded alike the sound of laughter and the sight of tears: their motto in the hour of calamity was—Be strong, and do not suffer.
Paul's motto, on the contrary, is—Suffer, and still be strong.
His view is essentially different from either of the preceding extremes.
On the one hand, he refuses to believe with the Jew that pain is an experience under which a man should
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crouch ; he sees in the ability to hear it a proof of the possession of divine love.
On the other hand, he refuses with the Stoic and the Buddhist to believe that a man's patience is perfected in proportion as he feels little; rather would he say that the proof of patience is the strength of that suffering which it bears.
And we must all feel that the Gentile Apostle has here the philosophic advantage over the Stoic and his allies.
Stoicism professed to teach men how to bear calamity ; it appeared in the sequel that it only taught them how to crucify calamity.
It did not give them power to be strong in spite of sorrow; it simply administered an opiate which caused the sorrow to be forgotten.
Paul saw clearly that such an opiate was no real victory.
He saw that the only moral conquest of suffering was the power to bear suffering, and that the bearing ofsuffering implied its presence.
He saw that the strong man was just the man who had not an opiate, who was alive to the pains of life, and yet did not succumb.
That is the power he claims for Christian love.
Now it has been the experience of all men in all ages that personal depression is naturally unfavourable to the diffusion of our social affections.
When a man is down in the world, he does not by nature look with much benevolence on those who are up.
But if their being up has something to do with his being down, the sense of grievance is intensified tenfold.
If he be a deformed slave like Epictetus,
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and is conscious that the Roman world is either laughing at him or shrinking from him, it is very difficult indeed for him to cherish for that Roman world a feeling of warmth; if he does cherish such a feeling, we are justified in calling his love a power.
Epictetus himself did not reach that state.
He was free from all anger, but that was because he had freed himself from all desire.
He, on his part, had as great a contempt for the world as the world had for him; and so far as the love is concerned, it is not very easy to see the difference between them.
Each had a contempt for the other's gift, and therefore each was regardless of the other's scorn.
This is a far preferable state to enmity, but it does not nearly attain the Christian power of love.
What prevents it from attaining the level of that power is the absence of the bearing element.
If Epictetus had been converted to Christianity, he would have lost his Stoicism, and therefore his refusal to hate the world would have meant the possession of power—power to bear through the power to love.
His reticence would not then have been a mere negation, but the positive manifestation of a sublime spiritual force which had power not only to refrain from vengeance, but to return good for evil.
We have called this a passive strength to mark the fact that it is love subsisting under the support of a burden.
We must carefully distinguish, however, between the word passive aud the word nega-
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twe.
We are often told that Christianity differs from other religions in the prominence it gives to the passive virtues—poverty of spirit, humility, meekness, and the like.
Such a statement may mislead unless we bear in mind that there are negative virtues which are called by the same name.
'There is a poverty of spirit which will be found in the creed of the Cynic, centuries before Christianity.
There is a meekness which will be found in the doctrines of the Stoic long ere the Cross appeared.
Yet we do not say that this humility, this meekness, was an anticipation of Christ's morality ; it had the same effect, but it had a different cause.
The meekness before the Cross was coutent to dwell in the valley, but only because it recognised the existence of no real mountain; it was the meekness of indifference which looked upon all life as on one common level of nothingness, and was therefore oblivious of the fact whether fortune smiled or frowned.
'The meekness of a Cynic or of a Stoic was not selfrestraint; when he had reached that stage he had nothing to bear.
But the meekness of Christianity had nothing in it either of Cynicism or of Stoicism ; it was essentially a self-restraint, and its motive was love.
It was not grounded on the belief that the pleasures of life were in themselves undesirable, or that the pains of life were in any case a matter of indifference.
It was built upon something whose presence was felt to be better than pleasure, and
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OF CHRISTIAN LOVE.
whose absence was believed to be worse than pain —the enthusiasm for humanity, the love of man as man: that was the secret of the Christian's meekness.
It is in this heht that we come to understand what is meant by Christ's own precept: ' Love your enemies."
To a Stoic the fulfilment of that precept in a positive form would be impossible; the most that he could do would be to abstain from hating his enemies.
There are two motives which may induce a man to abstain from hatred —indifference and love; the Stoic reached the first, the Christian alone attained to the second.
The one became so indifferent to the outward concerns of life that the infliction of a personal injury produced no impression on him; the other had such a love for the man as man that the injury of the moment though felt was covered.
The expression as man is to be especially emphasised.
The command to love one's enemy as an enemy would be not only a paradox, but a contradiction in terms.
It would be the command to fix our affections on that phase of a man's character which was most opposed to our own nature.
The Christian sense of love towards an enemy is precisely the opposite of this; it is the remembrance that our enemy has a side of his nature which is not discordant with our own, that even if there be nothing more between us, he is at least human.
The enmity is in every case borne as a cross, but
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it is borne.
The power which bears it is love; the object of love is the man in himself, the man because he isa man.
The enmity is not a subject of indifference; it is ever a source of pain.
The triumph of Christian love consists in the fact, not that it feels no obstacle, but that it has overcome the obstacle.
It has not annihilated its cross; it has taken up its cross, and its power bas been magnified and glorified in proportion to the weight it bears.
The second of the powers of love is that which we have called intellectual charity: ''Love believeth all things."
The idea is not that Christian love is able to believe wrong to be right, or incapable of seeing any fault in its object.
It is not tvo much to say that the perception of a fault is quickened by Christian love.
It is inevitable that it should be so.
If the presence of the disease 'involves the danger of death, the eye of love will be quick to detect its presence, quicker a thousand times than the eye of indifference.
Christianity professes to see in sin the presence of a disease which, if not arrested, must end in death; is it surprising that the first manifestation of that disorder should be made to the eyes of those who are most interested in its victim?
Intellectual charity does not consist in believing all things we see to be right.
It cannot be designed as a veil to hide, from a man's observation the actual state of the facts around him; its province must le in a very different sphere.
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And, indeed, a little reflection will convince us that the sphere of intellectual charity is not the world of observation, but the world which a man does not see.
To have intellectual charity, is, in plain terms, to think well of one's neighbour, to believe all things good of him in the absence of any proof of evil.
It is clear that such a state of mind belongs not to the region of observation, but to the stage preceding observation.
When I actually look upon a man's actions, I am at liberty to judge whether they be good or bad, and it is no charity to say they are good if I know them to be bad.
But if I do not know, if I have had no direct observation of the man's life and conduct, then in the absence of any such evidence it is the daty of my Christian love to disregard any unsifted rumours to his disparagement, and to believe in the meantime all things in his favour.
We say in the meantime.
There is no obligation laid upon any Christian man of refusing to observe facts, or omitting to investigate facts.
The man is only pledged to an act of faith so long as knowledge is uot within his reach, 'The sphere of knowledge is the legitimate sphere of judgment.
The moment I have come to know all the facts of the case I am in a position to give a verdict.
It is when the facts of the case are not before me that I am asked to walk by faith towards my brother man.
I am asked to occupy towards him an attitude of belief.
I am hidden to preserve that attitude even in the
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face of difficulties unless these difficulties amount to an absolute negation.
Just as my faith in the universe is to be steadfast in spite of the clouds which environ it, so my faith in the integrity of my fellow-man is to remain undimmed in spite of the breath of calumny.
Love by an act of faith is to impute its own righteousness to the suspected party as long as there hangs over him nothing more than suspicion.
It is to cover him with its wings until the calamity be overpast, or until the obloquy be proved to be just.
If the obloquy be proved to be just, love is not therefore to die ; nevertheless in this case it will change its attitude ; it will be no longer a love of charity, it will be a love of forgiveness.
There can be no charity towards wrong as wrong; there may be an admission of extenuating circumstances, but that is simply a suspension of judgment in our ignorance of the amount of wrong.
For wrong itself there can be no charity, but there may always be forgiveness.
Forgiveness, however, belongs rather to the first than to the second power of love, rather to the bearing than the believing.
We are at present only considering love's power of faith, its power to believe in human goodness as long as human goodness is not proved to be adream.
We have called this distinctively a stage of intellectual charity to indicate the fact that it belongs to the world of thought.
What we say is, that it can only be expected to last as long as faith remains
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faith, that when faith becomes knowledge love must take another form.
If my brother is proved to be pure, charity becomes superfluous ; love will not then say: I believe all things, but I know all things.
If my brother is proved to be impure, charity towards his sin is improper; love will then say, not, I believe all things, but I forgive all things.
The stage in which a man is bound to believe all good things of his brother—in other words, the stage of intellectual charity, belongs purely to that region of experience into which the light of his brother's life has not yet come.
It belongs to the period in which there is no personal knowledge on which to build, to the time when facts are few and testimonies doubtful.
It is then that the Apostle demands faith from love.
He demands not so much a suspension of judgment as a continuance in the original judgment formed ere any cloud had come.
He asks us to justify the man by our faith, to believe in him without knowing him, and before we have had an opportunity of testing him, to assume that he is true until the facts prove him to be false.
That is Paul's description of the essence of Christian charity —the charity of thought by which in the absence of proved facts we lend to our maligned brother the gift of our faith, the charity which in the meantime " believeth all things."
The third of the powers of love is what we have called moral optimism:
'" Love hopeth all things."
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This power is essentially distinct from either of the foregoing, and marks a higher phase of the strength of love.
The logical order in which the possibilities of the human heart are unfolded, would have been best expressed by saying that love first believeth all things, then beareth or forgiveth all things, and in its third stage hopeth all things.
It begins by disregarding the breath of suspicion, by refusing in the absence of definite knowledge to lose its faith in a man's virtue.
If there should come a time when love can no longer retain its faith in a man's virtue, it has then a second phase of life to enter upon; it can no longer believe that all things are right, but it can forgive all things that have been wrong, can bear the sin.
But when this has been done there awaits love a yet higher task; it has not only to cancel the past, it has to hope for the future.
[ may forgive an act where I have very little hope for the man, and I may continue to love him without having any hope of him.
We presume it is this which is meant when it is said, I will forgive it, but I cannot forget it.
You are willing to overlook the deed in itself, in so far as it isa past action, but you cannot ignore that present state of the man's mind which the action indicates ; your love is unlit by joy.
Now, St. Paul says that it is possible for love to reach not only forgiveness, but forgetfulness,
He says that a perfect love will look upon its object with the eye of hope.
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The old ideal you formed of the man was not true, is not true, but still may be true.
Charity can no longer believe him to be what he is not, but hope can believe that he will be what he is not.
Charity belongs to the sphere of faith, forgiveness belongs to the sphere of knowledge, hope belongs to the sphere in which faith and knowledge shall be reconciled, to a sphere in which that ideal of human life which is now proved to be an illusion shall become at last a great reality, and shall fulfil the highest expectations of our hours of charity.
Now, this moral optimism, this power of love to hope, is in the full extent of its range a phenomenon peculiar to Christianity.
Buddhism was a religion of despair.
Brahmanism was a religion of sadness.
Parsism was a religion which limited the power of God.
The Mythologies of the Old World did not lift their votaries above the impressions of the hour; the popular mind of Greece and Rome was too much occupied with the present to have either hope or fear.
Even the sects of philosophy did not reach an universal hope for man.
'lhe Epicurean avoided all thought of questions which did not touch his own individual comfort.
The Stoic longed for all men to think as he thought, but he did not dare to hope for it; it was his want of hope for mankind at large that pointed the edge of his contempt.
The Platonist had the ideal of a great and glorious republic, but its glory was to be reached by lopping off one-half the
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IQI branches of the tree of human life.
The only two regions in which an analogy to the Christian optimism is found are the ideal kingdom worshipped in the system of Confucius, and the Messianic kingdom contemplated by the children of Israel.
But the ideal kingdom of Confucius is after all but an idealised China, not an empire of universal Man, and the Messianic kingdom of Israel is a kingdom which is to minister rather to the glory of Israel than to the glory of humanity.
Now, Christianity is pre-eminently the religion of hope—of hope for all men without distinction.
The very first care of Christianity is to abolish distinctions in the claims of men to be objects of hope.
It declares that all are by nature equally euilty before God.
The earliest equality which the religion of Christ established among men was not a levelling up, but a levelling down.
It appealed to the brotherhood of souls, not by a common sense of privilege, but by a common sense of impotence.
Dean Merivale says that from a human point of view its essence consisted in the doctrine of the fundamental equality of men.*
It is true, and therefore to teach them this equality it spoke to that which was the most fundamental element in their nature—their feeling of absolute dependence; it told them that, one and all, they were dead in trespasses and sin.
And what we wish to point out here is that this common degra- * Hist. of the Romans, I., p. 55.
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dation was a common hope.
If there was hope in a dead world for the life of one, there must be hope for the lives of all.
There can be no degrees in death.
If love had any sphere at all it must be an universal sphere, In every case there was the same barrier to be overcome; if that barrier could ever be broken, it could always be broken.
If a single human soul had at any time, in any place, amid any circumstances, been raised from the bondage of corruption into the life of moral liberty, there was no reason in the nature of men why every human soul should not so rise, no reason in the nature of love which should prevent the command being given to it: " Hope all things !"
The fourth and last of the powers of love is that described in the words ' endureth all things."
It differs from the three foresoing powers, not in its quality, but in its quantity, and on this account it will not long detain us.
It is not a separate power from the charity of love, or the forgiveness of love, or the hope of love; it is the persistence in time of any one of these, or all of these.
It is the power of charity to retain its faith in man, however long that evidence is delayed which shall either clear or condemn him.
It is the power of forgiveness to forgive seventy times seven; it is the power of hope to hope on to the end.
In each and all of its phases it may be described as love's ability to wait.
'The ability to wait, the power to be permanent, the strength to keep its youth amid
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the dilapidation and decay of that ideal structure which was the object of its early gaze, is a possession which has always been regarded as marking the boundary line between love sensuous and love spiritual.
The affection of the animal for its offspring is shorthved ; the affection of the voluptuary for his object fades with the fancy of the hour.
Spiritual love is incapable of change and independent of change; spiritual love is the love of man as man, because he is man.
It rests not on the form of humanity, not on the deeds of humanity, but on the fact of humanity.
The form may be mutilated by accident or by age; the deeds may be sullied by calumny or by degeneracy ; but even in ruins the man is still man.
While that humanity remains the love of the spirit abides, for the love of the spirit is love for the spirit.
It is the love, not for any present, or past, or future qualities, but for that which les beneath all qualities, and makes all qualities possible—the fact of a human personality, the being of a conscious soul.
What else than this is meant when it is said, "We love Him because He first loved us"?
Divine love—love in its most ideal form—exists originally for the soul as a soul.
It is anterior to all the qualities which yet may arise in its object; nay, it is itself instrumental in the production of the best of these.
And as it is earlier than their origin, so it must, if necessary, be later than their decay.
If the soul should fall from its goodness, N
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it will then but revert to that first position in which love found it.
Love will take it up again in its emptiness, in its privation, in its want of all qualities which men call good or great.
The soul itself is more than all that it contains, and a love that is founded on the soul will survive the dissolution of its possessions; heaven and earth may pass away, but that love will not pass away.